Harry Potter lifts profit at Barnes & Noble

The boy wizard's final outing worked its magic on Barnes & Noble which posted a healthy jump in profits last quarter on the back of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Although Barnes & Noble sold the book at a hefty discount, demand helped push same store sales higher by 4.4pc, while total revenues rose 7.6pc to $1.2bn.

The world's largest bookseller said profits jumped to $18m from $16.6m a year ago - the difference between the revenue and profit lines highlighting the difficulties facing book stores in the face of competition from online retailers and supermarket chains.

Aside from Harry Potter, best-selling titles during the quarter included The Reagan Diaries, Al Gore's The Assault on Reason, and Conn and Hal Iggulden's The Dangerous Book for Boys which has already become a hit in the UK.

"Record breaking sales from JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was the principal driver behind our comparable store sales growth in the quarter," Chief Executive Steven Riggio said. "The book continues to sell well, as do all the previous volumes in the Harry Potter series."

However the company has said it will refuse to stock If I Did It, OJ Simpson's ghost written and hypothetical account of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.